Prehistory

Product Description

Featured on BBC World Service...Roots Quartet never stand still, they have been a duo, a trio, never a quartet. Strange things might happen if they do... Players include founder members Yvette Staelens and Abbie Lathe, currently touring with Maddy Prior (Steeleye Span) as 'Maddy and the Girls', and Michelle Hicks, Bronwen Harrison and ace guitarists Nigel Pope and Mitch Norman. Lute, Bodhran, recorders, whistles and curious percussive outbursts show up on their albums too. With musical roots in the west of England, Roots Quartet HQ is a Somerset dairy farm at the edge of the Somerset Levels, an area of ancient lowland bog teaming with wild life, where prehistoric trackways still meander silently through the landscape on their 4,000 year journey. Spring comes early here in a burst of snowdrops, golden primroses, and the cry of the buzzard from the ancient woodland on the hills behind the farm. It's an inspiring and beautiful landscape that has coaxed generations of Somerset people into song, a land that still inspires us today. Harmonies. We adore them. We experiment with them, we teach them at harmony singing workshops to hundreds of people, they drive our music. We love the un-accompanied voice, surely the finest instrument ever invented. We hope you enjoy our music, it has given us enormous pleasure in the making of it and we just can't stop. '... as performers, they have a natural rapport with each other, a sense of fun and an ability to grip an audience totally'. Ed Maddrell, Folkwrite.

Featured on BBC World Service...Roots Quartet never stand still, they have been a duo, a trio, never a quartet. Strange things might happen if they do... Players include founder members Yvette Staelens and Abbie Lathe, currently touring with Maddy Prior (Steeleye Span) as 'Maddy and the Girls', and Michelle Hicks, Bronwen Harrison and ace guitarists Nigel Pope and Mitch Norman. Lute, Bodhran, recorders, whistles and curious percussive outbursts show up on their albums too. With musical roots in the west of England, Roots Quartet HQ is a Somerset dairy farm at the edge of the Somerset Levels, an area of ancient lowland bog teaming with wild life, where prehistoric trackways still meander silently through the landscape on their 4,000 year journey. Spring comes early here in a burst of snowdrops, golden primroses, and the cry of the buzzard from the ancient woodland on the hills behind the farm. It's an inspiring and beautiful landscape that has coaxed generations of Somerset people into song, a land that still inspires us today. Harmonies. We adore them. We experiment with them, we teach them at harmony singing workshops to hundreds of people, they drive our music. We love the un-accompanied voice, surely the finest instrument ever invented. We hope you enjoy our music, it has given us enormous pleasure in the making of it and we just can't stop. '... as performers, they have a natural rapport with each other, a sense of fun and an ability to grip an audience totally'. Ed Maddrell, Folkwrite.